I never thought I’d put DPS and Harvard together in the same headline, but here we are. What Dr. Lawrence and the Board did — refusing to sign off on the Trump administration’s demands to eliminate all vestiges of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the district — could cost DPS millions. But as advertising legend Bill Bernbach said, “A principle is not a principle until it costs you money.”
Harvard also told Trump’s Thought Police to pound salt. Of course, when you have an endowment worth over $50 billion, you can afford to wager with a bit of swagger.
While the Donald may think he’s invincible — ignoring the Constitution, the courts, and Congress — messing with the Crimson may be way above his pay grade. It could lead to his downfall faster than destroying the global economy. Harvard grads might just be the closest thing to the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and the Guardians of the Galaxy rolled into one all-powerful, connected cabal — and they’ll happily show the Wharton weasel with the orange skin his way out of the White House.
I couldn’t be more proud of Dayton Public Schools right now. And to all the other districts that kissed the ring and acquiesced — you should be ashamed. If there’s one thing educators should be leading the way on, it’s making sure history doesn’t repeat itself.
How is this any different from Joe McCarthy’s hunt for reds under our beds, Hitler’s delusions of creating a “master race” (despite his ineligibility for membership), or the excuse of “separate but equal”?
To those districts who bowed, you might as well close up shop.
Because if you think the next steps — rounding up children and shipping them to detention centers — will be any better, you’re disqualified from being educators or trusted caretakers of our children.
We’ve seen elementary school teachers risk their careers over posters showing children’s hands of different colors.
We’ve seen legal residents American citizens rounded up off the streets and shipped to prison camps in El Salvador without due process.
UPDATE
April 26, 2025: from the NY Times, “A federal judge in Louisiana expressed concern on Friday that the Trump administration had deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras “with no meaningful process” and against the wishes of her father.
In a brief order issued from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, Judge Terry A. Doughty questioned why the administration had sent the child — known in court papers only as V.M.L. — to Honduras with her mother even though her father had sought in an emergency petition on Thursday to stop the girl from being sent abroad.
“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”
Asserting that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.””
Once we stop using our brains to tell right from wrong, why bother educating anyone at all?
We’ve seen books banned from the Naval Academy — like Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — while Mein Kampf remains on the shelves.
We’ve seen heads of our national security apparatus fired, while the current Secretary of Defense breaks security protocols at will.
At this point, up is down, wrong is right, and the White House thinks it’s the center of the universe.
Next up, Trump’s going to rename the planet after himself — and the morons in Congress will probably go along with it.
DPS has had a rough few weeks in the news:
- A brawl at Meadowdale.
- A shooting
atnext to the bus hub involving a student. - Another brawl at Belmont.
Seeing Dayton Mayor Jeff Mims standing next to Sheriff Phil Plummer on TV, shame-blaming kids for using the bus hub to get to school, had to be the last thing Superintendent David Lawrence expected.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that the Statehouse is also talking about cutting district funding, forcing schools to raid their cash reserves.
And still — why hasn’t DPS sued RTA and its leader, Bob Ruzinsky, for discrimination in federal court for charging DPS students more for bus passes than the general public?
UPDATE
25 April 2025: RTA’s Director Bob Ruzinsky responded to clarify that “RTA does not discriminate against DPS” — pointing out that DPS could use the publicly available Tapp Pay system like everyone else.
That sounds good — until you realize Tapp Pay isn’t truly public access. It requires technology — a smartphone or the ability to manage a reloadable fare card account. Cash fares are gone. Disposable passes (the option DPS uses) are more expensive precisely because RTA has built a system that assumes everyone has tech access.
Here’s the reality RTA ignores:
- Not every Dayton student has a smartphone or reliable internet access.
- Not every family has the time, tools, or literacy to navigate “account-based” fare systems.
- Disposable passes aren’t a luxury — they’re a necessity for kids left behind by a tech-first system.
So no, RTA — the system isn’t “fair.” It’s designed for the digitally connected and economically stable — not for the families who most depend on public transit.
And DPS? They should be demanding a real solution — not paying extra for a workaround.
Public transportation should be simple, affordable, and accessible to everyone — not just those with an app.
Ruzinsky also supplied the following document:
You can read it- or I had ChatGPT Summarize it:
Key Points:
- RTA gets federal funding (FTA) that limits their ability to provide “school bus-style” services. Public transit agencies can’t run exclusive school buses that could compete with private providers.
- “LS” Routes: In 2019-20, RTA created “LS” (Limited Stop) routes for DPS — open to the public but designed mainly for students. DPS paid ~$2.8 million for it that year.
- DPS canceled the LS contract after 1 year — even though it was supposed to run for 5 years.
- Today, RTA says it can’t just restart LS routes easily:
- Would need 9–12 months to hire/train 40–45 drivers.
- Would need to overhaul old buses or wait 30 months for new ones.
- Would need a long-term contract with DPS.
- Proposed alternative:
- Use Welcome Stadium as a new centralized afternoon transfer hub.
- 2–4 buses per high school shuttle students to the Stadium, then to their neighborhoods.
- Students still mixed with general public, to comply with FTA rules.
- RTA could create special passes restricted to student routes from noon–6pm.
- Summary:
- RTA says Tapp Pay was never the ideal solution for student transport.
- But their primary mission remains moving workers and general public county-wide, not operating a pseudo-school bus service.
- In their view, direct school transportation should be the responsibility of the district or a private contractor.
My response to this back and forth argument of who’s responsibility this is follows:
After reviewing RTA’s explanation about why their system isn’t designed primarily for student transportation, and DPS’s own missteps in canceling more tailored service options, the larger truth becomes clear:
Public transportation isn’t just for workers. It’s for the public.
And students are the public, too.
Yes, RTA must comply with federal regulations. And yes, DPS mishandled its own transportation strategy — insisting on inefficient door-to-door pickups instead of encouraging reasonable neighborhood-based bus stop systems.
But the deeper issue isn’t just compliance, cost, or contracts.
It’s that we’re still stuck designing transit around outdated assumptions — in a car-centric economy that limits opportunity, worsens poverty, and damages the environment.
Students deserve affordable, reliable, flexible transportation — just like everyone else. Whether it’s reimagining public bus routes, using micro-mobility like e-bikes and helmets for high school students, or building smarter neighborhood transit hubs, we need innovation, not excuses.
RTA and DPS should be collaborating on creating true multi-modal solutions — combining buses, bikes, neighborhood routes, and smart tech — instead of continuing the blame game while students are left behind.
Public transit should be designed for the whole public — students included.
We have a rare chance to rethink how we move people in Dayton — not just from job to job, but toward a more connected, equitable future. Let’s not waste it.
Probably only because their law firm, Frost Brown Todd, is too busy racking up millions defending DPS against a long list of lawsuits — lawsuits stemming from questionable HR practices and gross lapses of leadership, like allowing paraprofessionals to carry four-year-olds down the hall by their feet.
For what they’ve spent in legal fees over the last few years, they could have hired four or five full-time, in-house attorneys — and still saved a ton of money.
The bus issue can be solved.
But DPS lacks the gumption to tell the state what they just told Trump:
“Go pound sand.”
Unless charter schools are mandated to align their bell schedules with DPS, there’s no way to run efficient, affordable bus service.
In fact, the whole transportation operation needs a reboot:
- Stop picking up kids all over neighborhoods.
- Make students walk up to half a mile to centralized bus stops if needed.
(We’re not Uber — we’re a public transit system — and kids could use the exercise.) - And if you can’t figure out how to get high school students to school efficiently, give them each an electric bike and a helmet — and be done with it.
It will be interesting to watch the coming showdown between what’s left of the federal government and what’s left of a once-proud school district.
Reality is, public education is under siege.
Until Americans wake up and realize our system has been corrupted beyond repair — thanks to 30+ years of gerrymandering and dark money — it’s going to take a serious reboot to fix it.
We’ve reached the proverbial fork in the road.
Dayton Public Schools has taken a stand.
If there were ever a time to launch DPS 2.0, this is it.
The eyes of the nation will turn to Dayton — just long enough to possibly catch the favor of some billionaire’s philanthropic adventures.
The real question is:
Does DPS even realize it?
And do they have a plan?
Song: Stand Our Ground, by David Esrati
… Ok David. Since it is your contention Trump is “rounding up American citizens off the street and sending them to prison camps in El Salvador,” can you provide even one name?…
@Bandito- wait a few days- he’s already rounded up a few: https://truthout.org/articles/trump-administration-has-detained-citizens-as-part-of-mass-deportation-actions/
…not what you wrote dear David. “We’ve seen American citizens rounded up off the streets and shipped to prison camps in El Salvador without due process” were your words verbatim. And when asked for validation am asked to “wait a few days.” What are we waiting on?
Don’t fret, Old Bandito, Donald Trump’s not sending his brown shirts to pull you out of your house just yet – birthright and white are seemingly safe (so far). Take note, though, Trump doesn’t like old journalists (or new) who ferret out the facts.
Without legal authority, Trump ordered a Salvadoran national and Maryland resident in the US legally (with immigration, court, and legal permission) to a prison in El Salvador and paid for the incarceration. Trump was judicially ordered to NOT deport him to El Salvador, but he did it anyway. The Trump administration later admitted the deportation was a mistake. The man has not been legally convicted as a terrorist, nor has he been returned to the US, and his American wife and family, for review. We can thank Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen for his due diligence so we all can know.
Trump and DOJ/AG Pammie Jo continue to violate federal judicial and SCOTUS orders to immediately facilitate his return. Trump and Bondi refuse to facilitate his return. Apparently, they care naught for due process and the rule of law. They have violated their oaths of office under the US Constitution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azISxx0Lv_M&list=RDNSxNZI9ZD608s&index=9
Trump said he wants to send “homegrowns” aka Americans to El Salvador. I believe he would take great delight in sending Americans he deems homegrown terrorists to foreign prisons. Stephen Miller will probably get a stiffy over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy3LWz4vHjE&list=RDNSxNZI9ZD608s&index=3
Russian President Vladimir Putin consigned his own fellow Russian and political rival, Alexei Navalny, to a Siberian prison to die (only after Putin’s GRU-attempted Novichok poisoning failed). Ain’t democracy grand? It’s good to be the King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezy1LviMasI
If we can pluck CIA paid Panamanian President Manuel Noriega out from his own country and plunk him in an American prison, one has to wonder what kind of precedent we thought we were creating for our future at the time while under the Republican Presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush. Under his son “W”, Republican George W. Bush, we invaded Iraq based upon a lie of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Congress believed the lie and voted for war. No WMDs or mushroom clouds were found, and the actionable intelligence wasn’t a slam dunk either. People spoke out then, as now.
After muscular opposition from his detractors, Russian President Vladimir Putin jailed Alexei Navalny and essentially consigned him to die in an Arctic gulag (still Russian). And now, three years on, Putin’s propagandized “special military operation” invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine is what – a big deal or no big deal?
Under Trump 2.0, you can apparently lie every single minute of the day, commit a few crimes, and do prison time, to work in his administration. Yet, everyone must follow Trump’s arbitrary and capricious daily unitary executive rules while making regular overt expressions of adoration and fealty only to him, America’s Hitler (JD Vance’s nickname for our President). While we wait for Trump to check with legal, his young, flaxen-haired “Little Miss Leni Riefenstahl” explains (“Santa Monica Goebbels” Stephen Miller gets aroused every time he hears the dulcet sounds):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNZI9ZD608s&list=RDNSxNZI9ZD608s&start_radio=1
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-riefenstahl/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/5/1687333/-Trump-s-Stephen-Miller-and-Hitler-s-Joseph-Goebbels-are-chillingly-similar
Well, folks, the future is now. What did we learn from history? Donald Trump is still a lawless convicted felon President who needs to be impeached a third time, removed for good, prosecuted again, convicted once more, and frog marched to the federal or state prison best suited to house him for the many crimes he has committed (and continues to commit) against America and her people.
@Bandito- I’ve revised the article, I’m sorry- I’ve been super busy lately working on some other stories.
But- I still stand by my just wait comment…
…that’s reassuring dear David. I suspected my prose was not of sufficient caliber…
…surprised that you champion wife-beating, illegal alien gang bangers Melissa? Not really. Esrati.com is where one goes to read justification and excuses for the very worst of us.
Recently, for example, David composed a moving paean to the cold blooded killer Luigi Mangione. Adding to the absurdity was David’s characterization of Mangione as being “oppressed.”
In fact, Mangione is a member of the ‘one percent’ David so often rails against. An Ivy League graduate whose family owns elite country club, the mainstream treated us to pictures of Mangione sunning at various vacation spots. If that’s oppression, I’ll have some.
Furthermore, Mangione allegedly committed this murder with a ‘ghost gun,’ which until five minutes ago was anathema to gun control zealots. Yet the media has yet to supply their sermons against weapons they cannot control.
A woman engages in a high speed police chase resulting in the death of a young man. Yet, according to Esrati logic, the death is the Sheriffs fault.
Personally, Melissa, your writings display a particular animus against Caucasians. This is not unusual, since the academies seem to produce armies of self-loathing females. But racism engendered in universities is racism nonetheless…
@Bandito- a job awaits you at FOX “news”- where you can re-write what people say- or do- into some sort of prosaic paean to your pathetic president.
The woman who was pursued by the sheriff- was not a threat to society- they had no reason to pursue.
As to Mangione and his abuse of power- we have people shoot people all day, everyday – and no one cares… yet, shoot a CEO… OMG.
Now, maybe it becomes open season on hockey fans who claim to be former journalists… will you start complaining then?
The Trump administration IS trying to deport US citizens, is ignoring court orders, and is acting in bad faith:
“McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Hubert Montoya burst out laughing when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security emailed to say he should leave the country immediately or risk consequences of being deported. He is a U.S. citizen.
“I just thought it was absurd,” the Austin, Texas, immigration attorney said.
It was an apparent glitch in the Trump administration’s dismantling of another Biden-era policy that allowed people to live and work in the country temporarily. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is quietly revoking two-year permits of people who used an online appointment app at U.S. border crossings with Mexico called CBP One, which brought in more than 900,000 people starting in January 2023. The revocation of CBP One permits has lacked the fanfare and formality of canceling Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands whose homelands were previously deemed unsafe for return and humanitarian parole for others from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who came with financial sponsors. Those moves came with official notices in the Federal Register and press releases. Judges halted them from taking effect after advocacy groups sued. CBP One cancellation notices began landing in inboxes in late March without warning, some telling recipients to leave immediately and others giving them seven days. Targets included U.S. citizens….”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-immigration-cbp-one-asylum-4a3aae0453d17b6dfc2c9b590f19497e
“A federal judge said Tuesday that the Trump administration is ignoring court orders, obstructing the legal process and acting in “bad faith” by refusing to provide information about the steps they have taken, if any, to free a mistakenly deported man from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S. … She gave the administration until 6 p.m. Wednesday to provide those details. ….”
https://apnews.com/article/abrego-garcia-el-salvador-deported-mistake-trump-7d2c808f489b821135f5fccd5f01c487
More chaos, incompetence, lies and losing from Trump, Noem, Homan, Musk, Lutnick, & Hegseth. I bet Fox News Pete is jonesing for a tallboy right now….
…after asking for the name of one American citizen “rounded up” Melissa provides the name of Hubert Montoya, an American citizen who wasn’t deported. And Montoya took the vacate order with such gravity that he laughed out loud. Nice try, no stogie…
You know, Old Bandito, most journalists, even old ones, do their own research instead of relying on others to do it for them. It seems you didn’t even read what was written, reported and sourced, but felt compelled to jawbone on whites and women instead.
I snipped a bit of what was posted earlier: “It was an apparent glitch in the Trump administration’s dismantling of another Biden-era policy”. Yep, another day of Trump and his peeps screwing things up again.
Take a few minutes to consume the news of the day and then see if you still have questions. It’s a fast moving news cycle, I’ll grant you that, so I can understand if you are having difficulty keeping up. There’s a lot of reportage being conducted about our current government and its chaos creation. I wonder how many taxpayer dollars are being eaten up by all of this messy governing. I seem to recall Trump’s former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly saying Trump family member(s) in Trump 1.0 were “playing government”. Appears true.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/26/politics/ivanka-trump-south-korea-white-house-tension/index.html
Republicans always seem to tear down what Democrats built up for America. Why is that? Try working together for the American people for a change.
“…Esrati.com is where one goes to read justification and excuses for the very worst of us…”
And yet here you are, Old Bandito, for the repartee… ;-)
Welcome back
Liberals are idiots. We love watching President Trump spin you morons up. And it’s like a dog whistle to you. You just keep jumping to his tune. Keep it up mental midgets.
…Melissa makes accusations of sexual impropriety. When asked to confirm said act, she posts Doobie Brothers videos. Then self-righteously scolds others for not doing their research, when her lack of research is the very crux of the discussion…
…the Seven Mile Blood Crips shoot a member of the Chedda Boys at a gas station. That’s murder.
Surfer boy and Ivy Leaguer Luigi, fresh from his back-packing trip thru Asia, kills a CEO with the hope of political affectation. That’s defined as terrorism. That is the difference, a concept dear David, you cannot seem to fathom.
And in your beatification of Luigi, dear David, you go full blown Biblical. “Luigi was our David against our health care Goliath,” you wrote. That’s fan-boy adulation.
I’m not sure how Rabbinical Old Testament scholars feel about your elevation of Luigi to martyrdom. I suspect they would call it “meshuga.”
I can see why you aren’t a journalist anymore, Old Bandito, as you’re not telling the whole story. I did provide you what you asked, and more, but it was apparently too many receipts for you to wade through. Here is some of it again. The Doobies were just a little fun on “what a fool believes” – Fawn Hall, Oliver North, and/or you, but I digress.
Oliver North lying under oath before Congress, then why he’s not lying anymore:
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/gallery.php
Oliver North denying hanky-panky with his secretary, Fawn Hall:
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/07/09/North-No-hanky-panky-with-Fawn-Hall/7909552801600/
Oliver North used her, says Fawn Hall:
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1995/rt9507/950711/07110079.htm
Following him…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgPMYQTINNk
Billy, do you have more time on your hands to shitpost or are you just a troll?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitposting
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2025/04/17/googles-digital-ad-network-declared-an-illegal-monopoly-joining-its-search-engine-in-penalty-box/
“Unless charter schools are mandated to align their bell schedules with DPS, there’s no way to run efficient, affordable bus service.”
And until charters are required to maintain their own transportation services instead of leeching off DPS, it’s also never going to be fixed. You want the students so badly? Take care of ALL of their needs and stop requiring the major district to do it. Transportation is expensive? Too damn bad.
The Old Bandito asked about my claims of rounding up American Citizens and shipping the off to prison camps. I corrected it- and said- “wait a few days”
Here it is:
“A federal judge in Louisiana expressed concern on Friday that the Trump administration had deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras “with no meaningful process” and against the wishes of her father.
In a brief order issued from Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, Judge Terry A. Doughty questioned why the administration had sent the child — known in court papers only as V.M.L. — to Honduras with her mother even though her father had sought in an emergency petition on Thursday to stop the girl from being sent abroad.
“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”
Asserting that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/us-citizen-deported.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
…missing from the Esrati narrative about the deported two year old is the marital status of the mother. If the complaining father was not an ex-husband but a ‘baby daddy,’ American law is consistent with full parental rights vested in the mother.
As an aside, dear David, American case law is chock full of examples of citizens watching their kids being moved thousands of miles away by the custodial parent with the full blessing of the court…
RTA also responded with a defense of their pricing structure- which I still think misses the point. We’ve got a he said she said argument going- and no one thinking outside the box.
Feel free to re-read- and add your two cents in.
The Old Bandito is pretending to be a barrister now. Shed some light on the oodles of American case law you offer “dear David”. We’ll wait….
It sure looks like cases of rounding up American citizens and shipping them off to foreign countries with no due process. It’s clear the Trump administration is violating the recent SCOTUS ruling, but Trump and Bondi don’t give a damn about their lawlessness.
SOURCE: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/us-citizen-deportation-donald-trump-00311631
“A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week. The judge on Friday scheduled a hearing for May 16, which he said was “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”…
“As a U.S. citizen, V.M.L. is likely to have the ability to return to the United States, setting her case apart from others that have drawn national attention in recent weeks, such as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Salvadoran native was deported to a prison in his home country in violation of a 2019 immigration court order. But the Louisiana case is the latest concern by the courts that the Trump administration’s rush to carry out deportations is violating due process rights — in this case, the rights of a U.S. citizen child.“
More U.S. citizen children were deported. One four-year-old child was suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported without medication or the ability to consult with treating physicians. ICE had been notified in advance of the child’s urgent medical needs, but deported the child anyway. The attorney was not able to speak to her client after being detained and deported from the United States, the child’s birth county. Due process is a right, which is being completely ignored by Trump 2.0 and his DOJ/AG Bondi.
Trump and Bondi are utterly lawless. They are willfully ignoring court orders, current laws, and are shipping Americans to foreign countries without the ability to exercise their due process rights.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/27/us/children-us-citizens-deported-honduras/index.html
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/ice-deports-3-u-s-citizen-children-held-incommunicado-prior-to-the-deportation
As for voucher schools, aren’t they breaking the first amendment – separation of church and state? They corral almost a BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer money a year and then teach the kids all about religion. Why is this going on?